mekasha

Does the 1.25m heat shield have any useful effect for the Mk1 Lander Can? Obviously the sizes are mismatched (with the Lander Can being one of the few pieces that aren't 1.25 or 2.5), but the small heat shield mostly covers the bottom. Do the exposed edges negate the heat shield's effect?

No matter what your deployment settings, parachutes must always be activated manually first (either by staging or right-click). Once you have activated them, they will not "pop out" until the minimum pressure is met. With the default values, falling from orbit to kerbin will mostly guarantee your parachutes will burn up if you deploy them while still in orbit. Increasing the pressure trigger means that the chutes open at a lower altitude (pressure increases as you get closer to sea level). Opening lower means you have more time to cool down/lose speed due to drag forces, which is why your parachutes would survive. It's also possible that depending on your design and descent, you're coming in so hot that the parachutes are being melted off without even being deployed. If you're seeing heat bars show up on parts as you de-orbit, you're probably coming in too fast.

It's a pity I didn't keep the save, but I had a fairly minimal Mk2 turbojet/lvl909 spaceplane that would consistently crash the game around the same speed/altitude every time last night once I hit he point where most of the parts on the ship had a temperature reading.

I'd have to second this as mobile processing labs being the one place the difference really matters, ignoring mods like RemoteTech. Sending off 500 data with the little red/white antenna takes several real-time minutes, which you can't time-warp to speed up or switch to another ship. The dish takes probably under 30 seconds.

Caught my first asteroid, and used it to complete an outstanding "build a base in an asteroid" mission I've had for +3 years. I followed that up with my first manned Duna Landing and returning to orbit to meet my engine stage. Tonight I get to see if it has enough fuel to get Jeb/Bob/Bill home or not.

When changing SOI, does your old heading even matter, or is speed the only constant? I've finally had some luck capturing asteroids doing something a little counterintuitive; exiting Kerbin's SOI at roughly the same time and spot as a target asteroid passing through, and grabbing it in Kerbol's SOI. To manage that, I had to use kind of a crazy trajectory to exit at around the same time in the same place. Once I changed SOI's I was basically on what appeared to be a stable orbit almost directly next to my target asteroid (though still had to burn a bit to match speeds). Just for a clearer example, if I had two objects exiting an SOI at the same place, at the same time, (at the same speed?) but object A was going "straight" at the point, and object B was approaching that point at a 45* angle, what would happen when they exit? Will they end up in precisely the same orbit? Is the same true if their speeds were different?

Thanks all, I added a few of the big wing sections per below, and was also much less aggressive on climbing. With those few tweaks, I was able to land on Minmus and return (though I did use the fuel from the probe for the Minmus trip). Landing on landing gear without atmosphere is definitely a bit different.

Hello! I've finally made the jump trying to made an SSTO spaceplane for deploying satellites cheaply. I've had some minor success, but have two main issues I'm hoping to get some ideas on: As you'll see from the attached screenshot, I had to put a reaction wheel in the middle of the plane. Without it, I can get up to around 19km, but then the plane tilts forward in a dive that I can't pull up out of until ~15km. With the reaction wheel, I can get to 19km, gain speed, then point up. I make sure to use fuel from the rear tanks first to keep my CoM forward, so I have no idea why I really need the wheel/why I get stuck in a dive I can't pull up from. (edit: Stock Aero, stock everything except Alarm Clock) I'm using an Aerospike, but it seems to maybe not be the best. Even with the 1.5 fuselage tanks, I barely have enough LF/OX to get to a 72km circularized orbit, with enough to then de-orbit after launching my probe. Is there a better engine? I tried an LV909, but it didn't seem to have enough thrust to actually get me out of orbit.